Duane Bartley

“The effect of the Recovery Act on my personal life has been incredible in that I have less fear of the future.”

Duane Bartley is thrilled to have 2009 behind him. Last year was series of heartbreaks for the 40-year-old from Watkins. He got laid off from a job at an electric battery company in Boulder, where he had worked for a year and a half. His wife lost her veterinary business and had to declare bankruptcy. And several of their pets died, including a 30-year-old horse that Mr. Bartley had owned since he was ten years old. So when Christmas rolled around, the Bartleys decided they had nothing good to say in the holiday cards they had always sent in previous years. So they didn’t send out Christmas cards.

“2009 was a really tough year,” said the Salida native.

By the spring of 2010, Mr. Bartley and his daughter and wife were scraping by just to survive. They were planning to grow their own food because they didn’t have enough money for groceries. Duane was sending hundreds of resumes over the Internet, to no avail. Then he heard from a friend that UQM Technologies in Frederick, where he had applied for work years ago, was hiring. UQM Technologies was expanding operations thanks to a $45.1 million Recovery Act grant from the US Department of Energy. The company used the funds to purchase a new facility in Longmont that is 10 times bigger than their Frederick site. UQM is gearing up for production of electric motors and controls for electric vehicles this summer.

Mr. Bartley tracked down the person at UQM who was hiring and landed a job, which he started on April 6. He is working as a process quality engineer for the motors and controls.

The job has given Mr. Bartley his life back. And it has given him optimism that the Recovery Act will fulfill its promise of creating lots of jobs. His life since getting the Recovery Act-funded job “is like day and night.”

“The effect of the Recovery Act on my personal life has been incredible in that I have less fear of the future. But more importantly, it has at least giving me a glimmer that the snowball of job creation is starting to roll, and I hope that that is true.”

Now, the Bartleys are preparing to send their Christmas cards out.

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